Equinix boosts market operations
Global data-centre services provider Equinix is to strengthen its operations on the mainland with the opening of a US$63 million facility in Hong Kong in November, while targeting capacity expansion in Shanghai.
'We are experiencing healthy demand in Hong Kong and on the mainland, as our multinational customers want to expand their businesses in the country,' said Alex Tam Wing-yiu, the managing director for China at Equinix.
Tam said the new high-performance data centre in Tsuen Wan would complement its first Hong Kong facility, set up in 2000 with an investment of more than US$45 million in the same district.
A data centre is a secure, temperature-controlled facility that is built and equipped to house large-capacity server computers and enterprise data-storage systems, which are maintained with multiple power sources and have high-bandwidth links to the internet.
California-based Equinix, which forecast global revenue of US$1.59 billion this year, operates 98 so-called internet business exchange data centres across 38 markets worldwide. This infrastructure network provides more than 6 million square feet of space to more than 4,000 companies, as well as connections to more than 675 telecommunications carriers and internet service providers.
The second data centre in the city will have capacity for more than 1,450 cabinets for servers, which will come on stream in phases. By comparison, the first centre has 2,000 cabinets.
'If needed, we can expand the capacity of the new data centre in two to three years,' Tam said. 'We expect most of the demand will come from financial institutions.'
The company's two prominent customers are media and data services provider Bloomberg and the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange, which operates a trading platform for precious metals, industrial metals and agricultural commodities.
Tam said his immediate challenge on the mainland was expanding its Pudong data centre operations, run by partner Shanghai Data Solutions. 'We are considering different options to meet growing customer demand since we'll run out of capacity soon,' he said.
According to market research firm Gartner, data centre and web-hosting services revenue in the Asia-Pacific will rise to US$4.5 billion by 2015 from US$2 billion last year.
